I am beyond over it with all of these fake whole-food supplements. Every year, more and more of them come out. It is so incredibly frustrating to see companies doing this over and over again. I feel like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill over and over again after twenty years of screaming into the void about fake whole-food supplements.
I want to clarify that I am not saying synthetic or isolated vitamins have no value; they certainly have their use. What I am very much against is companies spending lots of marketing dollars making people think their vitamins are whole food when if people saw how they were made and what was in them, they would not believe they were whole food. If a company's packaging is designed to make people think a product is whole food, but it is not, then that marketing needs to go.
Real Whole Food Supplements Versus Fake Whole Food Supplements
A whole-food supplement is one in which all the nutrients come from food. They are not isolated from the foods but are contained in the same nutrient matrix that they naturally occur in foods. For example, magnesium in food would be bound to various amino acids and other compounds.
Freeze-dried beef liver capsules would be an example of a whole-food supplement, but b-12 isolated from beef liver would not be a whole-food supplement.
Examples of fake whole-food supplements
Many supplements claim to be made from a specific food, but the foods they claim to make them from only contain a very small amount of that nutrient, so it would not be economically viable to make a supplement from them.
The biggest culprit I have been seeing like this lately are zinc supplements claiming to be made from guava fruit or guava leaves. Guava fruit and leaves have minimal zinc, so making a zinc supplement from them would cost a small fortune. We counted over twenty brands selling zinc supplements or multivitamins with the zinc claimed to be from guava. Nearly all of them buy raw materials from one particular supplier. I have no way of knowing if the companies don't care, or if they did not research it and just accepted the supplier's claims that the zinc was from guava, or if they are deliberately misleading people.
Let's start with some math. Guava leaves are about 82% moisture. So, one pound of guava leaves dries into about three ounces of powder. Three ounces of powder is about eighty-five to ninety grams. One hundred grams of guava leaf powder contains about 230 micrograms (.23 milligrams) of zinc. This means to make one fifteen milligram (15,000 micrograms) tablet of zinc claiming to be from guava leaves, it would take over sixty pounds of guava leaves. That means making a bottle of sixty tablets of those 15-milligram tablets would take over 3,600 pounds of fresh guava leaves. There are probably not enough guava leaves and trees in the world to make the amount of zinc sold that claims to be made from guava leaves. Think of how much it costs to buy 3,600 pounds of guava leaves. Then, add the costs of manufacturing, shipping, and manufacturing. There would be no way to sell that product for twenty-five dollars.
Guava fruit, while delicious and healthy, is not a good source of zinc either. One cup of guava fruit contains about .38 milligrams (380 micrograms) of zinc. This means that making a twenty-five milligram zinc capsule would take over sixty-five cups of guava, and a bottle of sixty pills would take over 3,900 cups of guava, about 1,418 pounds. Think of how much money that would cost. You certainly could not sell it for twenty-five dollars a bottle.
Another example we see is iron supplements claiming to be from curry leaves.
Fresh curry leaves contain about 1 mg of iron per 100 grams, and when dried, 12 grams of iron per 100 grams. Fresh curry leaves are about 70% moisture, so each pound dries into about 150 grams of powder. So, making one twenty-four milligram tablet of curry leaf iron would take over one pound of fresh curry leaves. Making a bottle of sixty pills would take over seventy pounds of fresh curry leaves. This would cost significant money, plus manufacturing, packaging, shipping, testing, etc. There is no way it could be sold for twenty-five dollars a bottle.
The math ain’t mathing!
Another one we see a lot of is folate made from lemon peel, often labeled as folic acid from lemon peel extract. First, lemons and other plants do not contain folic acid; they include various folates. Folic acid does not exist in nature. If you see any supplement claiming they are getting folic acid from food, that is a huge red flag.
Second, lemon peel is not a good source of folate. One ounce of lemon peel only has about 3.9 mcg of folate, whereas one ounce of spinach has 58 mcg, and it is an excellent source of folate.
To make an eight hundred microgram tablet of folate from lemon peel, you would need over thirteen pounds of lemon peel and over seven hundred and eighty pounds to make a sixty-count bottle. Think how much that would cost. There is no way it could be sold for twenty dollars a bottle.
This is maddening! It’s also unfair to consumers because you should not have to do a lot of math and research to determine if a product is a whole-food supplement.
All too frequently, supplements claim to contain a vitamin or mineral derived from a particular food, but that food does not contain that nutrient.
For example, below is a supplement claiming to sell b-12, as methylcobalamin, from saccharomyces cerevisiae (nutritional yeast). Well, nutritional yeast does not contain b-12. When you buy nutritional yeast at the store that contains b-12, it is because synthetic b-12 has been added, not because it naturally contains it.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae does not naturally contain vitamin b12!
Here is what is really happening with products like that. Lab-made B-12 is being fed to yeast, and then they claim that it is from the yeast. I will leave it up to you to decide if that is how a whole-food supplement is made.
Feeding or fermenting yeast with some synthetic or isolated minerals, vitamins, sugar, and amino acids (a common practice many companies use) does not turn them into whole food supplements or whole food-like substances. For example, vitamin C (ascorbic acid) fed to yeast (nutritional yeast does not naturally contain vitamin C) does not develop the bioflavonoid complex that naturally occurs in oranges, and adding a few isolated bioflavonoids to the capsule does not have the same function as vitamin C naturally bound and complexed with the bioflavonoids.
Another common example of fake whole-food supplements is mixing synthetic and isolated vitamins with some food and labeling them as a whole-food supplement. Blending lab-made vitamin and mineral powders with some food powder does not magically transform them into a whole-food supplement.
The vitamins and minerals listed are not made from the fruit and vegetable blend. The company is mixing regular vitamins and minerals with a little bit of food. Do you think a company should be able to label this product a whole-food multivitamin?
When a company mixes regular vitamins and minerals with some food powder, the vitamins are not complexed with the food, nor do they become a part of the whole foods. However, the labeling, with terms like whole food, plant-based, food grown, and food-based, makes people think they are whole food supplements. This is excellent marketing, and it really seems to be working because if you show people the packaging, they believe, and rightfully so, based on the marketing, that it is whole food, and they think the vitamins in it are made from the foods listed on the label. It is an absolute triumph for these marketing departments. It makes me sick that this practice is allowed.
I can promise that we will never sell those kinds of products, and if something we are selling turns into a product like the examples listed above, we will discontinue it without a thought.
Real whole food supplements
Thankfully, some great companies are making real whole-food supplements. Here are some of our favorite ones:
NXGEN Wholefoods - The most nutrient-dense whole food concentrates and organs - Our choice for things like b-vitamins, iron, multivitamins, calcium, etc.
Cow and Bull - Whole food Beef Organ formulas for nourishing and building health
Rosita Real Foods - Omega-three fatty acids in their natural form
Whole Food Supplement Support
The next time a supplement's marketing or packaging makes you think it is a whole food, we hope you will stop and really think about whether it is truly a whole food supplement. Now, we know it can be hard to figure it out, so we are here to help! If you are wondering if a supplement is actually whole food, feel free to email us at info@rooted-nutrition.com or book a free call, and we will be happy to walk you through it!
You deserve real whole-food supplements!